vagabond blog: thoughts from the saddle

December 20, 2015

Motivated

It took a while, but I’ve finaly gotten back in the gym on a regular basis. I’m still wrestling a bit with my diet; I’d say I’m about 75% in control right now, but getting better. I enjoy the weights, always have, but I really hate cardio work. I find it very boring. The gym does it’s best to help keep you entertained while you tread water by placing big screen TVs everywhere. Sometimes, however, that only makes it worse.

Just the other morning I was working out on an elliptical machine, busy going nowhere, when I looked up at the television in front of me. Of all of the choices of machines available, I happened to land the one right in front of the screen showing HGTV. I don’t like HGTV. In case you didn’t know, HGTV is a tool women use to punish and humiliate their man. It gives them all kinds of ideas of how to remodel and improve your home. And since I don’t possess good carpentry skills it means I am set up for failure…or huge debt.

On this particular morning, as I’m swinging my legs back and forth on the elliptical, pain surging through my joints, beads of sweat popping up on my forehead and thoughts of biscuits and gravy dancing in my head, I look up for some help to pass the time…and I’m greeted by House Hunters. Or at least I think that’s what it is. I can’t think of any show on television that makes me feel more like a loser than that one. Why, you ask? I’ll tell you why; I never see anyone on that show shopping for what I think of as average priced homes. There is never a show where the couple is looking for $150,000 houses. Or $250,000 houses. Heck, I never see anyone shopping for $350,000 houses!

Here is what I do see: I see 28 year old couples, barely out of college and into a career and they are shopping for a new home. And then they get to the budget. On the morning in question, I look up just in time to see the closed caption statement from this young couple; “Our budget is $800,000.” $800,000? Seriously? I immediately say to myself, “Where the Hell did I go wrong?” I mean, my wife and I both have good jobs. We make a very respectable living. But $800,000 for a house? No f@#k*%g way! As my father would say, when I was 28 I could barely afford a pot to piss in!

So now I’m getting all worked up wondering how everyone in the world can afford a million dollar home except me. Or why I’m not in Costa Rica shopping for a second home like the rest of you obviously are. And why everyone can flip a house and make a fortune, except me. Then there is the landscaping; everyone’s is phenomenal…and I have weeds! HGTV is giving me such an inferiority complex that I’m about to explode. Next thing I know I have sweated so much I’ve soaked my shirt, 30 minutes have gone by and I’m swinging that elliptical so hard there is smoke coming from the pedals!

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riding, roasting & random nonsense

I have been riding motorcycles since age 7 and roasting coffee since 2002. Motorhead Coffee came about as a merger of those two passions. When I owned a wholesale coffee roasting business, I provided “Motorhead Coffee” to various groups, rallies and businesses in the motorcycle industry and the name just stuck.

This space is not just about coffee or bikes, but about the freedom of the road, the pleasure of the ride...and the desire to stop living someone else's life & and pursue your own passions.